The Food Canon

We served 160+ bowls of Penang Prawn Noodle recently. This lot was good with nice balance of flavours with sufficient prawn stock. When we did not need to add too much of the other flavourings (esp Ikan bilis and chicken stock), we knew we had a good broth coming.

My mum's version does not use pork bones which changes the flavor and is nice in its own way. And it is often used commercially because dried shrimps and ikan bilis are expensive.

I normally cook my Mum's version to give diners a unique taste of good home cooking.

I will write my cooking notes here to guide the team when they need to do this again.

Beautiful Broccolini

When I get to visit Australia, I am always impressed by how good the produce of their land is. One simple reason is that the farm may just be a a few miles away and the veg may have been harvested the very same morning.

Veg looses flavour and freshness once it's harvested. That sadly is one reason why Singaporeans will not be able to taste veg at their best as we mostly eat imported ones. There is something to be said about those grown here and I will leave that to another post.

Of course Singapore is a huge importer of veg and fruits from down under.

Poke your fingers in my eyes and I will open wide my jaws. 
Linen cloth, quills, paper, chicken, carrots - I am greedy and devour them all.
What am I?

Using the right kitchen tools can make your cooking experience easier and more pleasant.

A good chef's knife, a slim wooden stirrer, the right chopping board for the right task, a good strainer etc can make a big difference to your cooking efficiency. A good tool need not be expensive. It just needs to be well designed and fitting for the task.

My wife thinks I sound like a housewife pedalling cookware like those at shopping centers when I talk like this. This is not an advert post but in sharing this, I trust a tool tip like this can be of some help to home cooks.

Fish lovers must have read some news of late with some dismay.

Apparently there is a shortage of fish from Malaysia during the Hari Raya season, leading to a ban on imports. The fish involved are those which are popular to the Malay community including kembung, cencaru and selar.

I love any fish in the mackerel family. I have blogged about my love affair with Chilli Fish (or Ikan Sambal Chilli - fish stuffed with chilli) using the Cencaru fish and how it is always a finger-licking-good experience.  The only problem here is that it is hard to find this fish. With the latest shortage, I can imagine it will be even more scarce.

You are back from work. It is dinner time.

It is bad enough if you are the diner. But you are suppose to be the cook.

You open your fridge. Nothing there. You did not have the time to do any marketing over the weekend.

"We will eat out tonight...", you promptly declared. You hear some moaning in the background. "Not another long dinner outing, Mummy."

Your girl has the PSLE coming.

I thought this sign gave the event a casual restaurant feel.

It was fun to serve almost 200 diners a plate of home-made Nasi Lemak at St James' Church last Wednesday evening. There was a nice home-restaurant atmosphere.

It is the largest group we have cooked for thus far. I am glad to observe that the team worked well together to ensure a wonderful dinner and evening for all. Earlier, we were expecting to cater to a crowd of 120-150. As it neared 200 the day before, we switched some plans to better cater for this increase.

This is a pictorial post and I will let the photos and captions speak for themselves. There are some food and party tips in the captions.